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Linux Terminal Server Project Guide This short article is a synopsis of my experience recently of installing K12LTSP 4.0 and using it. It is in no way a substitute for digging deeper, and I don't claim it to be complete by any means. I have only skimmed over some of the basics and what I thought might be useful for someone installing K12LTSP for the first time. While the intended audience is schools, it works great for a home network where you would like to be able to log in from several different terminals and access your own files/desktop/etc.
Basically K12LTSP allows you to take older machines and turn them into usable thin clients for a faster server. The applications run on the terminal server (your fastest machine) . Workstations (your older machines) are like thin clients. They don't have software or need hard drives. In other words, take an old, slow, antique machine and give it new life instead of throwing it into the trash bin. I myself have set up a 75MHz IBM with 48MB of memory, an older 2MB video card, and a 3com509tpo Ethernet card; and booted K12LTSP on it; and it was fast! It's really strange to see an old antique perform like a new machine, but that is exactly what it did. I even created some graphics using The GIMP as a gauge on how fast it seemed to run, and it "seems" to run almost as fast as the server machine. The 75MHz machine is nine years old! I even pulled the hard disk completely out and removed the CD-ROM drive that was in it. The basic configuration is Internet to Ethernet card#1 of the SERVER then card #2 from the server goes to a hub, router, or switch that in turn feeds the network of client machines (dumb terminals) A default K12LTSP installation uses two Ethernet cards; eth0 and eth1. One card connects the server to the Internet (eth1). The other card (eth0) creates a private network for terminals (thin-clients). Your server and eth1 act as a gateway for the terminals to the Internet. eth1 is configured to obtain its IP address via DHCP. A private DHCP server runs on eth0 to give IP numbers to terminals. Servers are "plug and play" with little or no configuration required. It only takes about 20 minutes to be up and running. Setup Requirements You need a server (with 2 Ethernet cards installed) , a hub (or switch), and at least one client machine (only 1 Ethernet card needed in each of the client machines). Basic steps needed to get K12LTSP 4.0 up and running:
Step 1 - Downloading Your first stop should be at the K12LTSP website . This gives a good overview on what K12LTSP is all about and it is the official homepage for the project. This is also the place you need to go to download the ISO files. Take care to note the md5sums. Check the values after you download the ISO files. Just for reference, when using Linux, here is how you check md5sums.
If the md5sum does not match, then you have a corrupted ISO file that require downloading again. Checking your downloaded ISO images is an important step that should not be forgotten, as it will save you headaches later on, not to mention lost time. At the command prompt CD to the directory containing the ISO files. Step 2 - Server Hardware Analysis For K12LTSP 4.0 you will need two Ethernet cards that are Linux compatible. I found some fairly inexpensive cards at, of all places, Wal-mart. It was a Network Everywhere NC100u-wm Ethernet card. I bought this at my local Wal-Mart for $14.62 plus tax. Pretty cheap for a 10/100-Mbps PCI network card . I used a matching pair for my server. You will also need a relatively fast machine. The more powerful your server, the more responsive your terminals (clients) will appear. A CD-R burner for fast and easy backups and a fairly large hard drive is a definite plus also, as you are probably end up using the server hard drive and not the local hard drives on the clients. A easy way to check the compatibility of hardware with Linux is to download Knoppix and boot the operating system from CD to see if everything configures okay. If it doesn't, you may want to dig deeper and make sure that your hardware is Linux compatible, although that is not really a major problem today as it was a few short years ago. Step 3 - K12LTSP 4.0 Server Installation After burning the ISO images with your CD-R, simple load the first disk in and get started :) It's a very easy straightforward install. In the beginning you can choose specific options you want to configure:
Picking LTSP is probably the best choice for you if your wanting to setup a terminal server. You still have the option of choosing additional applications that are not included in the default settings. Follow the prompts and the installation of your server machine will be finished in a few minutes. If you experience any problems, the K12LTSP website offers additional installation information. Step 4 - Configure Client Systems Many machines have a BIOS option that allows you to boot from network. If your motherboard has a built in Ethernet adapter, chances are this is the case. All you often need to boot such a system is to to adjust the BIOS settings. However, if your like myself, I have a few machines that do not have built-in Ethernet adapters, and in fact have old ISA slots. Since ISA Ethernet cards are extremely cheap ($5 or less) a common way is to get a boot disk for them to boot from the floppy drive. This is much easier than it sounds. Step 5 - Configure Boot Floppy (if required) The ISA card I used was a 3com509tpo Ethernet card from 3com. To get an older machine to boot from floppy with such an Ethernet Choose your network card from the dropdown list in the first box. Then choose: PXE loadable ROM Image (.zpxe). That is the only choice you need to make for K12LTSP. Then follow the directions for creating a boot disk from the downloaded file. It's that simple. For a Linux system the directions are simple. Place a formatted floppy in your floppy drive. Open a terminal window and CD to the directory where the downloaded file is located. Then use: $ cat eb-5.2.2-yournic.zdsk > /dev/fd0 If you want to use a small hard drive or other device instead to boot LTSP, then you can find additional information here and here . Step 6 - Configure Client Sessions For some older i386 clients you may receive this nice little error: Fatal server error: You must specify a keyboard in XF86Config The fix is a very simple one actually, as specified in the documentation . The above error can happen if you are attempting to use the XFree86 3.3.6 Xserver. The message is misleading. What has actually happened is the /tmp/XF86Config.1 file is empty. This is caused by the fact that the build_x3_cfg script is missing. The solution is to download the build_x3_cfg script and install it in your ${LTSP_ROOT}/i386/etc directory. Typically, this will be in /opt/ltsp/i386/etc. Once you've put the script into the proper place, make sure you set the ownership and permissions properly. Here is an example of how to set it: chown root:root /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/build_x3_cfg chmod 0755 /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/build_x3_cfg One file you may need to edit if your machines have older Ethernet cards is /etc/dhcpd.conf. A sample change/addition would be something like this: host ws005 { hardware ethernet 00:A0:24:6E:2B:62; option option-128 e4:45:74:68:00:00; option option-129 "NIC=3c509"; } The HOST ws005 would change to the next number in the list. The Hardware Ethernet value is the MAC address of the actual card. You have to know that. Booting up a boot disk that you created earlier will show you the MAC address as it starts to load. If you need to edit this line, you will know it because the boot up disk won't complete. The option-128 line should not be changed! The option-129 line changes to your Ethernet card name. You should also check out the settings in the /opt/ltsp/i386/etc/lts.conf file. This file contains settings for local hardware and default printer/video/sound settings. Tweaks I made after installation that were not really terminal server related per se, but were very nice, included Synaptic Package Manager. The Synaptic Package Manager is very impressive. I installed several apps with it that were not included with the default install and not on the disks. (Bluefish for one). Talk about something that was a breeze. This was the easiest install I have ever done on a Linux system, EVER! I was able to install Firebird (one click --- take that you windows lovers), in addition to one click installs for Java, Adobe Acrobat, and Flash; from the root desktop of course. Step 7 - Installing MP3 Support Here is how you enable .mp3 support in fedora for XMMS:
Should work perfectly, at least it did for me. Conclusion - Final Thoughts Assuming you followed the instructions, you should now have a fully working K12LTSP network comprised of a terminal server capable of supporting multiple clients. If not, the USA Linux User Group offers a dedicated forum for troubleshooting and discussing the K12LTSP platform. For my conclusion, pictures of my K12LTSP network can be found here , along with additional reference material here . Crouse is owner/operator of the USA Linux Users Group , an online forum dedicated to supporting the Linux
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